Visualizing Year 2000 program changes

Within the information technology industry the Year 2000 problem involves identifying and repairing legacy programs that will fail at the millennium when the year transitions from 1999 to 2000. To help address this problem, we have developed a visual application that shows Y2K impact in COBOL programs. Using our software visualization approach, programmers assigned to the conversion can see Y2K impact on an entire code portfolio, by application, by subsystem, by program, and even by line of code. The insights gained from our Y2K views lead to more efficient conversion strategies and more effective progress tracking.